It’s a very particular kind of a teenage emotion that powers Stephanie Silver’s new play Our Big Love Story. The type of feverish intensity that has the characters swinging wildly between shoving their hands in each other pants, bitterly hating a former friend and weeping for the recently dead. It’s hard not to feel slightly maternal towards these antsy creatures, to want to pop the kettle on and get them to sit still for a moment.

A bomb explodes on a tube train at Liverpool Street Station. Four school friends and a teacher enter into a game of blame, revenge, scapegoating and forgiveness in the following months. The relationship of two characters to the bomb is simple – one is in the tube carriage, the other’s father has been killed. For the other pair, a Hindu schoolgirl racially bullied and the daughter of an EDL member, it’s the ripple effect of the event that implicates them.

There are many convincing performances of adolescent mannerisms by the cast. In particular, Holly Ashman as Destiny is a muddle of misplaced anger and transparent vulnerability.

Gemma Thomas’ set design of horizontal bars is also effective. Shaped like both tube carriage and climbing frame, it neatly suggests the closeness between child’s play and adult violence.

The handicap is that the play is overly weighed down by its ambitious attempt to address so many ‘issues’. Along with terrorism and retribution, there’s interracial relationships, lesbianism, availability of pornography, and generational divisions. Too much zeitgeist and not enough storytelling.

We need your help…

When you subscribe to The Stage, you’re investing in our journalism. And our journalism is invested in supporting theatre and the performing arts.

The Stage is a family business, operated by the same family since we were founded in 1880. We do not receive government funding. We are not owned by a large corporation. Our editorial is not dictated by ticket sales.

We are fully independent, but this means we rely on revenue from readers to survive.

Help us continue to report on great work across the UK, champion new talent and keep up our investigative journalism that holds the powerful to account. Your subscription helps ensure our journalism can continue.